


yes yes no

by remi_wolf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Fire, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Memory Loss, Mentioned Helen Richardson, Mentioned Lionel Elliott, Mentioned Naomi Herne, Multi, Nightmares, Survivor Guilt, Upton House (The Magnus Archives), Whump, Whumptober 2020, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: a cold moor to a twisting hallway to a class and then to a comfortable room where he can breath and Jon knows that his nightmares are getting worse, he knows that they are, but he doesn't know how to get them to stop, and it's much easier to relax into Martin and Tim's embrace and insist that he's perfectly fine, even if they can see that he's slowly falling apart.Whumptober Day 18: Panic! At the Disco. Alternate Prompt 10: Nightmares.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions, Remi's Whumptober Collection for 2020, Whumptober 2020





	yes yes no

a cold moor and he can feel the fog and see it swirl in non-existent wind and storm and rain and he’s following a woman whose name he knows and he knows he knows it, can taste it on the tip of his tongue, but he’s never seen her before, and she looks back at him with eyes wide with terror as she looks at him and continues to run through the endless graveyard, hand reaching out to a cold gravestone and finding and collecting a piece of it and he knows that it is her gravestone and she looks down and screams as she reads her name from it and he follows and she runs and he finds himself tripping over another gravestone and falling into a—

long hallway that stretches and twists and turns left and it keeps turning left, he can see the turn, and if he looks down a branch, he can see it turning left down further there, and even if he tries to look towards the right, he only looks towards the left, and he sees a woman walking through the hallways, pushing at mirrors and stumbling on broken heels, who looks horrible, looks a terrible sight, and when she glances over her shoulder at him, her eyes are wide, too wide, reflecting the colors of the hallway back to him, and he knows that she is not looking at himself, but at something behind him, but that thing is not for him to see, it is her pain that is for him to see and he follows her as he opens a door and walks into—

an operating theatre, or something like that, and he steps into the cold, sterile tile room, looking around at the class of students with the professor at the front of the room, the professor who looks terrified and confused and stares at the collection of students, all holding hearts up to their faces with conflicting voices asking about the particular movements of the heart, about where the blood goes through one valve and out another, and soon what was a drop of crimson becomes a flood becomes a bright red apple with teeth grinning out of it and the students become too tall, too short, too pretty, too ugly, too generically human to be called human again, and the man’s terror is sweet on his tongue, the man’s terror is beyond what the man can process, and the man can’t even look at him, and he looks around the room before his eyes almost fall upon a mirrored surface for him to look back at himself, but before he can manage that—

“Jon! Jon, wake up, darling, please.”

Jon awoke with a gasp, flailing and unintentionally lashing out, only bringing himself back to the present when he feels his hand connect with a nose, and he immediately winces as he hears Martin’s yelp of pain. 

“Oh, oh, Martin, I’m so...oh, god, okay, I’m...I’ll get my glasses and a towel—”

“No, nope. You two stay, I’ll get the towel and water and everything.” Tim’s voice isn’t much more than a groan, and Jon shrinks back in the bed, trying not to feel even worse about having woken  _ both _ of them up, even if he was sleeping in the middle and it was somewhat difficult to have a nightmare that didn’t wake up both of your partners when you were in the middle of a sandwiched pile of cuddles. 

“I’m sorry, Martin..." Jon sighed, looking at the dark shape that was Martin, and he leaned over, finally turning the lamp on as low as it could go, and he winced as he saw that Martin’s nose was already bleeding. His watch must have caught his nose, even if he hadn’t meant for that to happen. It had happened, though, and Jon frowned to himself as he reached over to pick up his glasses. 

The motion revealed just how badly his hands were shaking, though, and Jon’s frown deepened as he paused for a moment. The nightmares were getting worse, far worse, and he wasn’t entirely sure what was bringing them on at all, but it needed to stop. 

“Jon?”

Jon took a deep breath, quickly picking up his glasses and shoving them on his face before looking back at Martin and smiling. “I’m alright. Bad dream, that’s all. You know me.”

“Yeah, just like we know that you’re lying through your teeth, Sims.” Tim walked back into the room, and Jon frowned slightly as he looked at him, glancing away after a moment. 

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just let us take care of you a bit, alright?” Tim looked at Jon for a moment before leaning over the foot of the bed to press the dampened towel to Martin’s nose, kissing the silk headscarf on his head as he wrapped his free arm around his shoulders in a gentle hug. “You don’t have to be fine. Thought you’d realize that by now. ‘In sickness and in health,’ and all that bullshit we said at the church in front of everyone.”

Jon smiled faintly, glancing down at his rings and gently rubbing them, nodding slightly. “I...yes, you’re right, of course,” he murmured, blinking for a moment as Tim shoved a glass of water against his chest before taking it and sipping at it. “Thank you, Tim.”

“You’re welcome. Just...let us know if you need help, alright?”

“Yeah. I should hope you know by now that we just want to take care of you, alright? Our precious little librarian.” Martin grinned, setting the towel down on the nightstand before moving to pull Jon into his lap, holding him close. 

Something didn’t seem entirely right, though, something tugging at the back of Jon’s mind. 

“I’m...I’m not a librarian, though..."

Tim laughed softly, looking between Martin and Jon before his smile slowly shifted and fell off his face. “What are you talking about? Of course you are. You’re a librarian, Martin’s a newly-published poet—” And didn’t Martin look adorable, puffed up slightly with pride, because that achievement was only a month old, the polish not worn away yet. “—and I’m in publishing. You...you know this, Jon.”

Jon wanted to know this. Everything almost felt right, but there was something deeper nagging at his mind that had him shaking his head. “No. No, no, I’m not. I’m..." He trailed off for a moment before he took a deep breath, looking between them. “I’m the Archivist. The Archive. And Martin’s my Assistant.”

Tim frowned, looking at Jon, cupping his cheek gently before brushing his thumb against his jaw. “Then where does that put me, Jon?”

Jon took a shaking breath, the pieces falling into place like the beginning of a glacier fracturing and falling off the continent. “You’re dead. You...you died to stop the Unknowing, and I couldn’t help you.”

The confused look on Tim’s face twisted, turning into something worse, and Jon could hear wood snapping and crackling with a fire that seemed as though it had been burning for hours already. Tim was angry, and Jon felt a pain deep in his chest as he realized this was the Tim he remembered, angry and hurting, and the last time he had ever seen the man. 

“That’s right. I’m dead, because you couldn’t save me. Because you landed me in a cursed job at a cursed archive and got me killed. You ruined my life, Jon!”

Jon shook his head, trying to ignore it, trying to ignore the pain and hurt as he looked between them, all of the pieces coming back into place, and he looked at Tim, and then at Martin as he remembered everything. First a trickle, remembering that he and Martin had been separated by the Lonely, and then a rushing river of knowledge as everything from the present to the Apocalypse was poured back into his head, and he couldn’t help but scream. 

“Jon!”

Jon jumped, looking around the comfortable room he was in before his eyes settled on Martin, and he smiled faintly, curling into him. “Martin..."

“You alright? You...I almost want to say you looked like you had a nightmare..."

Jon shrugged, burying his face in Martin’s chest, taking a deep breath. “You know, I really don’t remember at all.”

Martin laughed softly, petting a hand through Jon’s hair gently. “Guess losing your creepy Eye powers will do that to you.”

Jon hummed softly, nodding, wishing he knew why he felt such a yawning void on the other side of his body, where he knew someone else should be curled against him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very sorry for that ending. It was...an interesting time, and I promise when I started writing this, I fully intended to give Jon a bit of a break and a happy ending with this fic, but by the end, it twisted into another nightmare. It was interesting writing it, though, and I hope everyone enjoyed it and can forgive me for it. I really did like writing this one. Comments are always appreciated!


End file.
